untitled Emma fic
by Aerenii
Summary: Some love stays


Emma slowly rose from the edge of the bed, loosing a sigh and brushing an annoying strand of hair from her eyes. The damn thing kept creeping loose and bothering her the entire time, refusing to stay tucked away. Not that she had time to properly deal with it!

She looked down and gave another sigh, heavy with exhaustion and frustration. He was finally asleep, thank God! and she was certain that he would stay that way this time. It was the third time that night he had woken her with his screaming, nightmares running wild in his mind. His harsh, ruined voice had torn through the walls like wind through a dilapidated barn; cutting through the still night and wrenching her from sleep.

They had warned her it might be like this, nightmares and fits interspersed with stages of near catatonia.

She picked his covers up from the floor, flipping out first the sheet and then the quilt; quickly so they each settled lightly over him. She remembered how their mother would do the same thing when they were little, making them giggle as the fabric tickled against their skin. They would lay side by side in this very bed, which seemed immensely huge when they were toddlers, and beg her to do it again, and again. She would, letting them know it was the last time by flipping the cover over their faces and tugging it quickly down with an order to go to sleep, not spend the entire night whispering and giggling, tucking them tightly and kissing each of their foreheads.

The bed that had once seemed large, even with the two of them in it, was now barely long enough for him, and even his slender frame covered the majority of it.

Fetching warm water and a rag, she gently cleaned blood from the side of his face. The itch of healing scars made him scratch in his sleep; torturous, blood ridden night terrors had him clawing at his face and arms. She would give it a thorough cleaning in the morning, when she could see just how much damage he had managed to do. She had resorted to the same trick their parents used to curb their thumb-sucking-socks secured over the hands. It wasn't always effective; he was occasionally able to work his ways free, like tonight, but it usually gave her enough time to pin his arms down before he got too far.

She redid the socks and smoothed the covers over him, taking extra care to tuck him in tightly. It seemed the only thing that hadn't changed about him was how much more soundly he slept was he was cocooned in blankets. Barring the nightmares, of course. She couldn't wrap him tightly enough to keep those at bay, even though she would wrap him in every scrap of fabric in the county if it would help him in any way.

'It isn't going to be easy,' they had warned her, as the went over the regimen she would have to follow daily to nurse him back to physical health. She had accepted that. She was a practical woman, and she wasn't exactly a stranger to difficult circumstances. Besides, this was her brother, her twin, the other half of her soul...did they expect her to just abandon him?

They warned her that he might be drastically changed; that the things he had done, whether through orders or just simply to survive, might affect his personality. She understood that, on a logical level. They warned her he might have 'issues' with identity because of his injury. They gave her some long-winded explanation about how one's sense of self was rooted deeply in appearance, but surely taking him back to the farm he had spent most of his life on would help him adapt to his new condition. That also made sense to her, because after Richard left she threw herself in to work to regain some normalcy. Of course she knew that her sense of loss at her twin's leaving was nothing like his sense of loss, but still, she had to hope it would help him.

What they didn't warn her about was that he would look at her much the same way he would look at a food he had tried once and couldn't remember if he liked it or not. They didn't warn her that he would be emotionally dead, severed from the most basic aspect of humanity. He was polite, thanking her in much the same way he would thank a waitress in a diner for refilling his coffee. If she tried to start a conversation, she was lucky to get monosyllabic responses; usually he said nothing. If she was lucky enough to get him to look at her while she spoke, there was no interest in his eye, even if it was a subject he was passionate about before he deployed.

She kept her patience, as much as she wanted to yell at him at times. She tried to be understanding, even though she didn't understand him any more. She stayed calm and composed around him, even though there were times she wanted nothing more than to break down in tears of anger, stress and grief. She never let him see her as anything less than capable and proficient.

She still loved him, nothing could change that. But every time she saw the ruins of his face...the vividly red, healing flesh, the gaping cavern that had once held his eye, the thick seams of skin where doctors had done their best to stitch his face back to some semblance of normalcy...she felt a bit of horror and revulsion. When he spoke, it brought tears to her eyes to hear the harsh, broken sounds that emerged; a drastic contrast to the light, happy tenor that used to call across the fields as they worked. These things made her sad and angry and a little scared, but they did not alter how she felt for him one bit. And she would never let him know that these things affected her; it would make him wonder what it did to people he didn't know, if they did so much to his own sister. So she did her best to act as if everything was fine, even though there were times she thought her entire life might fall apart.

It was too late to hope for sleep, so Emma sat at the kitchen table for a few moments. But she had never been one to sit idle for long, inactivity had always driven her nuts; so she made coffee, did the wash, and started breakfast. When that was close to done, she went back to the bedroom. She knocked on the door and stuck her head in.

"Breakfast is about ready," she said, not sure if he was asleep or just ignoring her. "I need to run in to town later. Want to come?" No response. "Well, breakfast will be done in about 5 minutes. Do you need help getting dressed?"

"Mm. No."

"Please don't dawdle. You need to fix that porch railing today. It shouldn't take too long; you can finish that while I run errands in town, and then we can start in the barn when I get back."

She turned away when he gave no indication that he heard, but before she had taken a full step, his gruff voice croaked "This. Mm. Is...Mm. Your. Fault."

Emma froze, slowly turned her head, and said "Excuse me?" It was the first time since she had brought him home that he had spoken to her without her saying something first, and she found the words a very accusatory start to a conversation.

"I. Said. Mm. I...would. Try. Mm. To..come. Back. Mm. In...one. Mm. Piece." As he took a moment to rest his damaged vocal cords, Emma pictured the day they saw him off at the station. There had been tears in her eyes as she hugged him one last time; she was so proud of him, but she worried for him none the less. She loved him to death, but he was so sweet and gentle, totally unsuited for war; she wouldn't diminish his bravery, add to his nerves, or embarrass him, by questioning his decision or making too big a fuss over him. _*Be careful_* she said the same words every time he left the house.

_*I'll do my best to come home in one piece*_ he said. She could feel the muscles in his back trembling slightly.

"And I said 'just come home alive'," she finished softly, echoing her words. Her body trembled with hurt and anger. "So because I didn't want you getting killed, because I couldn't bear the thought of you dead in a trench halfway around the world, this is my fault?" She took a deep breath, biting back what she wanted to say because it wouldn't help anything if she said them. "I'm going to town. Eat, then work on the porch."

She walked away as quickly as she could without actually running, hearing his blame with every step she took. It was hard to keep her emotions at bay; if he had intended to hurt her, he had certainly succeeded, but she wouldn't let him know that. She pulled breakfast off the stove, and made sure the burners were off; if the house caught fire Richard might just lay there and burn with it, given the way he'd been acting.

She walked briskly out of the house, to the car, which didn't want to start in the chilly air. She pounded the steering wheel, threatened to drag the rusty piece of crap all the way to the nearest lake and dump it, and finally managed to get the engine to crank.

Emma sometimes regretted how isolated their farm was, but not this morning. She drove a mile or so down the county road, then pulled over in a fallow field and finally let tears she'd been holding for months flow free. Worry, anguish, stress, pain, and now guilt, poured down her cheeks and escaped her throat in painful sobs. She had no one she could talk to anymore. It used to be that she could bare her soul to her twin, ease her mind by bending his ear. But that was gone, now. And Emma had never felt so alone in her life.

Being a practical woman who thought histrionics were a waste of time and energy, Emma pulled herself together after a few minutes, wiping her face with her hands. There was a shallow puddle in the ditch across the road, coated with a thin layer of ice. She broke the ice and splashed the cold water on her eyes, trying to cover the signs of her tears. A glance in the Hudson's side mirror showed slighty puffy eyes and a red nose, but if anyone asked she could probably get away with saying she was fighting a cold.

She ran her errands, answering the same questions about how she was and how Richard was coming along, every time she saw someone. She just smiled and said she was fine and Richard was coming along as expected, although she wanted to scream that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Richard was bitter and had no desire to live.

By the time her errands were done, and she had driven home, she felt in control of herself again, able to face Richard calmly and try to discuss what he had said. There was no sign of him on the porch, but when she leaned against the railing he was to fix, she found it sound and firm. Good; if he was up and moving, maybe he would at least listen to her. She went inside and found a note on the table.

*_Sorry for what I said. I didn't mean it. I put the leftovers in the oven to keep warm. Rail is fixed. I had to take a walk. I'll do the barn tomorrow._*

She left him alone for a while, but when he wasn't back by late afternoon, she grew concerned and set out in search of him. It was well past dusk when she found him, sitting on a small hill that overlooked a creek that marked the edge of their property. The other side of the creek was the Gorman farm; Richard was staring at the small, fenced in cemetery that held three generations of Gormans. The most recent addition was Lawrence, who had shipped out for training the same time as Richard. Unlike Richard, Lawrence returned to his family in a pine box. Emma didn't envy the family their loss. She wondered if Richard envied Lawrence his return.

"You don't have to say anything," she said, sitting beside him. "I just need you to listen." He gave a very small nod, but didn't look at her. "I know you changed, in ways I will never be able to understand. I'm sorry you went through what you did, and I'm sorry I will never be able to relate to it. But I'm not sorry you're home, even if it is in the condition you're in.

"I stood with the Gormans, when they buried Lawrence. That was hard enough; I don't think I could have handled it, if it was you. I prayed, every night you were gone, that you would come back breathing. I didn't care if you lost your legs, your arms, as long as I didn't have to put you in the ground."

"Mm. They. Say. Mm. Be. Care...full. Mm. What. You...mm, wish. For."

"Yes, well..." Emma pulled at a blade of grass, brown and brittle with winter approaching. "I never thought wishing and praying were the same, but I still got what I asked for." She took a deep breath. "What I really wanted to say was, I know things have changed, I know you don't feel like you used to...I can see when you look at me that you don't love me. Maybe it's because you joining the army, going off to war while I stayed here, it's the first thing we did separately. Maybe it's because of what you saw over there, and the things you had to do. Or maybe something broke inside of you when you were injured. I don't know what made you change, but nothing about me, has. I still love you, Richard. I don't think anything will change that. Not how you look, or sound, or the things you say when you're angry at your existence and can only lash out at me. I love you when you're having nightmares, or staring morosely out of the window. I don't know if it means anything to you, or if you care, but I love you."

Emma stood and brushed off her skirt. "I'll leave you in peace, but please don't stay out all night. I won't be able to sleep if you aren't in the house."

"Mm. You...aren't. Mm, able. To...sleep. Mm, if. I. Am. Mm. In. The. Mm, house."

"True," she said with a small laugh, not entirely sure if it was a joke or just an honest observation. "But at least I know where you are."


End file.
